page_title: Lev Landau
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Lev Landau / Life / Early years
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Давид Ландау с женой и детьми Соней и Левой. 1910 г.
context_page_description: Lev Davidovich Landau was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.
  His accomplishments include the independent co-discovery of the density matrix method in quantum mechanics, the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second-order phase transitions, the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity, the theory of Fermi liquid, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, the two-component theory of neutrinos, and Landau's equations for S matrix singularities. He received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of superfluidity that accounts for the properties of liquid helium II at a temperature below 2.17 K.
context_section_description: Landau was born on 22 January 1908 to Jewish parents in Baku, Azerbaijan, in what was then the Russian Empire. Landau's father, David Lvovich Landau, was an engineer with the local oil industry, and his mother, Lyubov Veniaminovna Garkavi-Landau, was a doctor. A child prodigy in mathematics, he learned to differentiate at age 12 and to integrate at age 13. Landau graduated in 1920 at age 13 from gymnasium. His parents considered him too young to attend university, so for a year he attended the Baku Economical Technical School. In 1922, at age 14, he matriculated at the Baku State University, studying in two departments simultaneously: the Departments of Physics and Mathematics, and the Department of Chemistry. Subsequently, he ceased studying chemistry, but remained interested in the field throughout his life.
caption: Landau family in 1910
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